Today’s Democrat & Chronicle reports that this year’s economic forecast by Sandy Parker, chief executive of the Rochester Business Alliance, is “sobering.”
“Where the state as a whole is faltering, upstate — to be frank — is sinking,” Parker said. “Job growth is anemic, incomes are nearly stagnant, and people, particularly young people, are leaving for more promising locales.”
What bothers me most about this is that, as a lifelong resident of Upstate New York, I’ve been hearing essentially the same words for at least 30 years — since people first realized that the manufacturing sector that once supported the Great Lakes economies had begun to falter.
Nor has the dialectic changed much over time. On the one hand, there is the handwringing and the cynicism. We don’t get enough sun. We’re overburdened by taxes and a moribund state government. “There goes Kodak. There goes Sibley’s. There goes Midtown Plaza. There goes the fast ferry.”
Then you have the responses, which IMO tend to be narrow and to have a certain hot-house quality about them. The proposed performing arts center idea is an example. I am sure the people who support it are very well-meaning. But it’s not enough to support an idea because it’s a cultural amenity that I, a native, would patronize. The key question is: would it excite people from Philadelphia, or Seattle, or (gulp) LA? Even more to the point: would it excite them enough that they would fly in for a weekend? Spend a little money? Check out local real estate prices?
And how many of them can we expect?
I’m not saying a performing arts center wouldn’t accomplish this, btw. What I’m saying is that we need to be careful which questions we’re asking — and of whom we’re asking them. Moving money from the pockets of someone in Pittsford to the pockets of someone in Chili is all very nice, but it doesn’t do a thing for the overall economic health of the Greater Rochester Area.
Another example is this recurring assertion that we need to attract young people. We do attract young people. They are here right now, walking to classes at the University of Rochester, at RIT, at the Eastman School of Music. The question is not how we attract them, but how we keep them. “Create jobs,” people will say, and then our leaders will rush off to brainstorm on how to incentivize :-D businesses into settling here. That’s well and good — and heaven bless every start-up in this town — but I’m not convinced that a handful of fledgling companies is enough to re-define the climate — the milieu — of a community.
What we really need is to figure out how to make Rochester a “happening place.” Until we do that, people outside of Rochester are going not to take the trouble to come here for a visit, let alone to stay. Not in significant numbers, anyway.
So how do you make a community a “happening place?”
On December 1st, the Wall Street Journal ran a piece titled “The Fair That Made Miami Hot All Year Round” (subscription required). Here are the opening two paragraphs:
The story of Frank Gehry’s design of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, is by now familiar. Cities world-wide have begun to aim for the “Bilbao effect”: the construction of a spectacular museum building that attracts international visitors and boosts the economy. The story of the “Art Basel effect” is less widely known. It is the tale of the leading art fair for contemporary art, which has been presented in Basel, Switzerland, every June for the past 36 years, also coming to Miami Beach for the past three Decembers and becoming America’s premiere art fair; the fourth edition of Art Basel Miami Beach opens today.
Although it is a once-yearly, four-day event, Art Basel has profoundly altered the shape and scope of Miami’s cultural landscape, affecting real estate and tourism rates and enhancing government support for the arts.
Art Basel is “happening.” It brings 30,000 art lovers into Miami and (last year) 640 journalists. Moreover, locating it in Miami was enough to shift peoples’ perception of that city.
Art Basel’s effects on Wynwood are not limited to a burgeoning gallery district. Four high-rise residential buildings are currently under construction there, as is Midtown Miami, a 56-acre shopping area and residential complex in a former railroad yard adjoining the neighborhood. If Wynwood, which is still decidedly seedy, is soon to be gentrified, the evolutionary process was undoubtedly “supercharged” by Art Basel Miami Beach.
Now for the real kicker. The fair’s current budget is $14.4 million — and that’s triple what it was the first year.
Miami got this all going with an initial budget outlay of less than $5 million.
The current estimated price tag for our Renaissance Square project — of which the arts center is one piece — is $230 million.
Obviously, I’m not going to propose that we try to woo Art Basel away from Miami. But I’d dearly love our leaders to look to successes like Art Basel for ideas. We need need to find our own wild card — the thing that will make well-heeled, educated people spend a week here, and then maybe start to think how nice it might be to own an Ontario Lake-front summer home.
Because that’s the demographic shift that raises our tax base. And widens the pool of start-up capital for local businesses. And injects cash into our service economy.
One idea that comes to mind is an indie film festival — but one that is modeled after Miami’s Art Basel template. More from the WSJ piece:
In accord with the Swiss model, the fair is not a self-contained entity. A public art program, performances, video and sound lounges, discussion forums and “crossover” events involving fashion, books, music, film, architecture and design are all variously sponsored and promoted by Art Basel Miami Beach. Then there are “partners” in the greater Miami area, ranging from art venues to nightclubs, that feature events officially sanctioned by the fair.
In other words, don’t show a few films at the Eastman House and expect to attract scads of jet-setters packing wads of cash. Make it a real Event, with community-wide tie-ins that involve Rochester and our neighbors.
Whatever you do, though, make sure that you craft it — whatever “it” is — not so that it polls well in Rochester, but so that it pulls well from the rest of the world.
And get away from a focus on infrastructure alone. Yes, we need infrastructure — I’m referring to the arts center and projects of its ilk again, here — but infrastructure isn’t enough, as the fast ferry debacle has demonstrated. We all know, after all, that you can attract 250,000 to a field outside a little town in the middle of nowhere, if people get the idea that the field is going to be a happening place. No infrastructure required.
Let’s figure out how to make Rochester a happening place.
As someone who has worked in and around Midtown for around half of his working life, I can tell you that the very DISCUSSIONS of a PAC in where McCurdy’s is now, is the very reason so many owners of Midtown ahve been having such a time getting the palce filled with business tennants. The other, rather obvious probems of conducting business downtown aside for a moment, who wants to rent in a building that the city’s going to take over and tear down?
I hunted around a bit online and it looks like PACs are pretty popular development projects right now, and that many seem to be doing well (in any case, I didn’t stumble onto stories of failing PACs & infuriated taxpayers). Whether a PAC is the best idea for Rochester, I don’t presume to know, but I’m pretty sure we have to do more than just build it w/ some Hollywood notion that then, they’ll come . . .
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Not sure if the above image will display here but this image http://www.flickr.com/photos/thinkerx/89073655/ of the Canadian flag that is displayed at the terminal should give you an idea of just how little we have been thinking this through.
Oh. Ouch.
I have visited Rochester for the second time in my life. The first was in 1985 when I was going to train at Bausch & Lomb for my employer. It was snowy here and there were potholes in the road that could swallow cars. The weather was so bad I could not go anywhere but training for the week I was here.
I have been here for 3 days now. When I drove up I was fearful I was going to land in the frozen tundra again. I was surprised that you had no snow.
I am doing some consulting for a company here in your town. I see a lot of jobs going overseas for cheap labor. A lot of disappointed people wondering what their fates will be. All of this is very sad.
I have heard the words FAST FERRY about 100 times in 3 days and how it is not running any more. It seems these words are conversation starters in Rochester.
I also see stress and sadness in many employees eyes where I am doing my consulting. I hope I do not hear more about disappointments.
It is obvious that a strong employment base builds a tax base, attracts new people for jobs. Higher living standards create the wealth and taxes necessary for recreational and cultural projects. Since it appears that a large number of your population are employed by one or two big employers, I suggest that you seek more diversity in employment. Perhaps creation of enterprise zones will help.
I hope your town finds a way to turn things around.
Hi, Michael — thanks for stopping by and commenting on my blog!
How sad that you’re finding people so stressed . . .
Enterprise zones is an idea, and we have done some of this in the past. But the real problem is that we’re saddled with an oppressive tax code, the political priorities tend to be inordinately influenced by NYC, and we’re losing population. The last point is perhaps the most important, because it exacerbates the tax issue. Aa Zubalove, another Rochester blogger has pointed out, NY state already has the highest Medicare rate in the nation, by a huge margin. As our population ages, that isn’t going to get better . . .
btw I hope that you’re heading out today! Yes, our weather has been mild this week (this is about the fourth spring we’ve had this winter) but a cold front is moving in and some predictions this week have pegged tomorrow’s high at 12 degrees!!!!
:-)
I grew up in Rochester,amidst a family of 4th-generation RochesteriansI was witness to the prosperity and industriousness that the City represented.I was proud of the town (still am),and I loved every street and tree and building that made the place what it was–Home.
I lived on Chili Avenue,in the Eleventh Ward,was a product of the Catholic School system and the Rochester Transit System and I worked and studied in the City until I went away for good in ’69.
I saw winters that would freeze your hair,knock you down with brutal winds and bury you in house-sized drifts,then come back the next week with yet another dose;I did a lot of time sailing and swimming and partying at Charlotte and Durand Beachs on balmy Summer days that took all night to end.I raced fast cars on “the Main”,ate at Nick’s,danced at Red Creek.There were friends and family all over town,just a few in the suburbs,like Brighton or Gates.I came to know Rochester intimately.
My student number at MCC is 1576–I attended the OLD campus,on Alexander St (which was also,then,the OLD East High),and drank 5-cent beers at a tavern just off-campus.As students,we would party all along Main,which stayed busy well past 10PM.The new campus,which opened after I’d graduated,was a wonder,but it was so damn far out into the COUNTRY that it made little sense to build it there.
Kodak was going great guns,Xerox was expanding so fast that stock millionaires were appearing on every block,Bausch was yet another world-beater HQ’d in the City–and a miriad of other big corporations,like DuPont,GM/Delco/Rochester Products,Singer,Tandy,etc,were hiring anyone who wanted a job at wages that embarrassed union towns like Buffalo or Cleveland,making products that everyone seemed to want.
I know–I went to work for many of them during summer breaks from school.There were always good jobs to be had.
The Universities were overflowing with talent,Downtown was busy–like a real city–neighborhoods were comfortable and varied,restaurants and local food outlets served a variety of “home town” cuisine,there was a great bar scene and the City,especially in Summer,was a hell of a town to live in and hang out in.
Things like Midtown Plaza and the Xerox Tower,the War Memorial and the Civic Center seemed to cement the Downtown into a necessary permanancy.Music venues were everywhere.You could ALWAYS find good,live music in Rochester.
Then,on a late Summer weekend in 1964,in an event that belied the City’s history and reputation,some of the worst race riots in the country’s history permanantly changed the History of The City of Rochester.Helicopters were shot from the sky as the City burned.Looters roamed familiar streets,smashing and burning the urban fabric so carefully knitted together by earlier Rochestarians.
The White population abandoned the City,en masse after the riots.The Jewish area around Joseph Avenue,the Italian neighborhoods on the East Side,Irish and German on The West Side–they all left town and the suburbs began to bloom.
Rochester’s population,once as large as 340,000,dropped like a rock.Net worth of City residents–in a town that once held the largest population of millionaires,per capita,in the USA– plummeted;vacant houses–in a town that once had the largest percentage of homeowners,per capita,in the USA– began to take over whole blocks.
Businesses packed in in,giving up on the City and re-positioning themselves to suburban Malls,made all the easier by the expressway network that was emerging.
Unemployment jumped as poorer residents became the majority.Big hometown businesses–places that only expanded,never contracted–began layoffs and plant closings as markets shifted beneath them.Welfare trumped payrolls,for the first time ever.The City’s economic base,also for the first time ever,was melting away like an April snowbank.
Xerox went to Connecticut.
Gannett went to D.C,Tandy to Texas.
The talent,money and the tax base that made the City so viable was leaving town.
This was something that had never visited Rochester.The City seemed somehow uninvolved in the recessions and bad times that other cities had to endure,but by the early ’70s,a place once so secure in it’s boots that it was dubbed “Smugtown” had come to resemble the rest of the Rust Belt.
It just took a little longer for Rochester to get there.
It’s easy to blame the ethnic shift for Rochester’s demise.It’s also easy to blame corporate restructuring,suburban flight,foreign competition,high taxes or crummy weather,but he primary reason the City is struggling lies in the new demographics that define Rochester in the 21st Century.
It has become a city of the poor and abandoned,a crumbling place of dreams realized then lost,stuck in an economic climate as poor as the natural climate.
From here,35 years on,it looks like a basket case.I’ve visited,many times in the years since I left Home.A cruise down Main brought a tear of ennui to my eye.Kodak Park–what’s left of it– made me gasp.
Surprisingly,a few old friends from the Old Days are still there,but every one of them has a Monroe County address.No one I know actually LIVES in Rochester,and a lot of them have not been Downtown in years,except to pass it by at 60 MPH.
Nothing seems to work for the City anymore.Industry is all but gone,Kodak is but a bit player on the Corporate Playbill and nothing is going to appear on the horizon to save the City from further dissloution,unfortunately.
“Things fall apart,the center cannot hold,mere anarchy is loosed upon the land” –I don’t know to whom that quote belongs,but I do know Thomas Wolfe told us that “You can never go home again”,and he was right.
Sorry if this thread went long.I’ve got a lot to say about the City that once was,and I feel badly whenever I think about the City that is.I can only hope that the bell curve that describes today’s Rochester has reached it’s bottom and that all will be better,but I don’t really believe it.
It was Yeats — the quote.
http://www.well.com/www/eob/poetry/The_Second_Coming.html
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Thanks for the reminder.At my age,I carry tons of stored one-liners around in my head and can’t always match quote with author.I suppose that’s how plagarism gets born.
I’m a long way from home these days,but I cannot shake Rochester from my life–never have been able to.Since moving to Florida in 1971,I have met many Rochesterians,some of whom I knew from the old days,others whom I would run into in diverse places around the state,and in every case our conversations would turn to the current sad condition of the City.
(I can recognise a hometowner from the distinctive accent that Natives possess,although I sometimes will be challenged by a Chicago accent since they are so similar; spotting Rochesterians has become a Sport for me).
I came to realize,early in my Florida experience,just how many of my former neighbors had shed their Western New York persona and had come South to re-invent themselves.I wondered,on more than one occasion,which of my neighbors and classmates were still left in the Old Town.
Not many of them at all,it’s turned out.A hell of a lot of them came here.
Familiar Rochester companies have also closed their Upstate doors and moved–lock,stock and employee base–to the Sunshine State.
The Sibley family put it’s fortune into upscale Florida land development and made more money selling condos in The Keys than they ever did selling shirts on Main.They closed their stores to better spend their land profits in the sun.
Mangurian’s,once the main Rochester furniture store,is now gone from the City but they are all over South Florida,selling their sofas to Sibley-developed homeowners.
Hylan Airmotive left the City to become an avaition powerhouse in Florida,and I’ve spotted construction activity all over the state being done by a famous Rochester contractor who has evidently set up shop here(and,whose name I’ve temporarily forgotten–CP Ward,maybe…).
Transplanted Rochester Car dealers sell more here in a day than they ever did during Kodak’s Bonus Weeks.Nothnagle’s Gallery of Homes does booming real estate business in Florida.
Gannett has four newspapers and several TV stations here and they are buying even more locally.In Rochester,where their diluted Corporate DNA lines every landfill, they just sell papers.
The principal reason given for their change of address is ALWAYS the weather,followed by sad observations of the gradual dissloution of the City’s appeal–deteriorating neighborhoods,the flight of good jobs and a shrunken financial base.Those conversations always go that way,no matter the age or social position of the person I’m talking with.
It’s odd how few degrees of separation lie between me and the Rochester strangers I’ve met.We always seem to have someone in common back home,and can establish social or work ties in a few minutes.
The best parts of these conversations often revolve around food.
Rochester has a strong food memory for me.
I remember the pop of a Nick’s Red Hot,the tang of Smitty’s Fried Chicken,the mounds of thin sliced beef on a Campi’s Bomber,the enormous breakfasts at the Country Club Diner,and I’m remembering them so well right now that I drool like an idiot as I type.
I miss Don and Bob’s juicy cheeseburgers,the ones where the burger sticks about an inch outside the bun (or were Vic and Irv’s better??? I can’t recall ) and when I think Ice Cream,I long for a Cappy Sexton’s custard.When I think Subs,Amiel’s is the bar that must be crossed;I wish I could find a restaurant as good as the Wishing Well somewhere around here,or a Deli like Fox’s.
In Florida,there are very few of the little neighborhood taverns around,the kind that sit on a corner,have pickled eggs in a jar and put Beer Nuts on the bar so the rainy day Jenny drinkers have something to kill the beer’s hoppy taste with.
I’d like to support Rochester businesses,although that’s almost impossible to do today.
I can buy Genesee Beer here,but now that it is owned by a foreign company it’s just cheap suds to me.I can get Russer’s meats here,but Russer’s–the family is distantly related–is now a Buffalo company;French’s Mustard is now owned by a European conglomerate.
I only buy Kodak film,however.I REFUSE to buy Fuji.Japan has seen none of my photography dollars,zero.
My parents,now gone,were good friends with the Wegman family,and we used to fly all over the place in their private plane.Now that generation of Wegmans are gone too,although much of the family live in Florida.
I was immersed in the City at a young age,and try as I might,the experience Baptized me to Rochester for all eternity.
Here’s another unattributed quote,one that kind of sums up this post:
…”Time is the school in which we learn;
Time is the fire in which we burn”
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